'To a lot of people, it was their life' Residents, merchants reminisce about Old Hickory shopping center lost to fire From The TENNESSEAN
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
By Lee Ann O'Neal
Staff Writer  | MICHELLE MORROW / STAFF
Village Barber Shop and Village Salvage & Antiques can be seen from a part of the charred Old Hickory Village Shopping Center across from the parking lot. Nearby businesses are trying to cope with the impact the fire has had on their friends, businesses and lives. |
OLD HICKORY — The sweet, cool texture of a cherry smash lingers in Lisa Siebel's mind. It's the drink she ordered often at Old Hickory Village Shopping Center.
The drugstore soda fountains are long gone since a recent fire engulfed the center. Now Siebel has another, darker page in her book of memories.
Siebel, 48, grew up on Debow Street just a few blocks from Old Hickory Village. She is a hair stylist at Community Barber and Style, where she is still a few blocks from the center, now a hulking shell of mangled support beams and piles of brick and ash.
"I cried all the way here to work. … When you see nothing but those metal rafters and the bricks, it was devastating," she said.
Donald Vaughn walked over from his Village Barber Shop last Wednesday, surveying the rubble in disbelief. When business was slow, he said, merchants from the strip would come over to his barbershop, just "killing time."
On the evening of the fire, Vaughn watched as his friends' dreams went up in flames and wondered if the fire could spread to his shop, he said. His shop, in front of the shopping center, escaped the blaze.
"I almost felt guilty because I'm going to be OK. You look down here, and your friends' (shops) are just burning up," Vaughn said.
From the tables down the street in Maisie's, you can peer over the bright blue window frames and see the back of the debris. Owner Susan Lamb, in the restaurant business for just 18 months, knows many of the shopkeepers by name and by their favorite dish.
Lamb has trouble finding clarity in her emotions, but what surfaces is "a whole mix of anger and exasperation and just sorrow," combined with ''heartbreak'' for the two teens who have reportedly admitted setting the fire and for their families. The Tennessean reported that a 15-year-old and a 17-year-old surrendered to officials.
"It was an old building, but to a lot of people, it was their life," Vaughn said.
Nearby business owners wonder what will become of the property and if it will one day resemble what it was.
For now, Lisa Siebel can hang on to her recollections of soda fountains and cherry smashes. "In my mind, it still is like it was when I was growing up."
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